Building the Next Generation of Healthcare Leaders 

Healthcare investment is entering a more mature phase. The focus is moving beyond breakthrough ideas alone towards the businesses that can turn innovation into sustainable, essential services. John DiGiovanni, Partner and Head of Healthcare at Inflexion, a growth-focused private equity investment firm, explores what makes a healthcare company truly investable, why operational discipline matters as much as innovation, and how private equity is identifying the platforms shaping the future of the sector.

What makes a healthtech or biotech company attractive to private equity compared with venture capital investors?
Venture capital underwrites the science or innovation while private equity underwrites the business. We look for companies that have already proven demand through recurring revenue, profitability or a clear path to it, and a customer base that genuinely can’t function without them. We then use our capital and playbooks to accelerate an established model, rather than funding a bet on whether one exists. In healthcare, that often means the enabling infrastructure around innovation rather than the molecule or device itself.

Where do you typically see healthtech businesses struggle when trying to scale beyond early growth?
The most common failure point is mistaking a product for a platform. One strong offering sold brilliantly by the founder doesn’t automatically translate into a repeatable commercial engine, an international footprint or a second product line. The other is underestimating how much organisational infrastructure (such as finance, quality control, regulatory, and professional sales leadership) is needed before the business can truly and reliably scale.

How has the definition of a “successful healthcare company” changed for investors over the past decade?
A decade ago success was largely a growth story, whereas today it’s a resilience and cashflow story. Investors now want demand rooted in structural necessity rather than discretionary spend, defensibility rooted in proprietary data, regulatory expertise or scientific depth (moats that hold up as AI compresses commodity services) and profit to prove the business can be self-sufficient over time.

Where are you currently seeing the most compelling opportunities for growth across healthcare markets?
We like the infrastructure that enables innovation to reach patients: areas like clinical trial services, market access and health economics, medical device consumables, clinically oriented healthcare IT and occupational health. These are fragmented, mission-critical markets where demand is driven by the rising complexity of therapies rather than the fate of any single drug, and where well-run platforms are increasingly scarce and valuable.

How important is regulatory maturity when assessing whether a healthcare business is ready to scale?
It’s close to a prerequisite. In healthcare, regulatory capability isn’t just compliance overhead, it’s often the moat itself. We’d rather back a company that has over-invested in quality and regulatory early than one that’s grown fast on foundations that may not survive regulatory scrutiny or policy change.

If you were advising a health-tech founder today, what is the biggest mistake you see them make when trying to scale?
Chasing breadth before depth. It’s often tempting to expand into new products, segments or geographies before optimising the one that matters most. The healthcare buyers who matter (pharma, providers, payors) reward proven, referenceable depth in a niche far more than a wide but shallow offering. The founders who build category leadership in one lane create far more optionality and value than those who diversify early.